That's It, Mr. Giraffe, All The Marmelade

Back! But first -

MY MOMMY'S COMING!

Hi Mommy!

She is coming to Spain to take advantage of my location. If she can do it, you can also do it. Not kidding. I highly encourage anyone who wants to use me for personal gain in this regard.

So anyway,

Andalucía

Duke In Madrid: Hits and Misses

Deciding that Córdoba, Sevilla, and Granada were the places to visit: HIT
Deciding that it was appropriate to visit all these places in four days: MISS
Bringing us on guided tours with knowledgeable Art History professors: HIT
Bringing us on guided tours and yelling at us for not blending in: MISS
Touring the Real Alcázar: HIT
Leaving me in the bathroom while they toured the Real Alcázar: THAT WOULD BE A SWING AND A MISS, FOLKS.

The Bus Ride and Córdoba
Let me preface this by saying that Spain is a beautiful country. It really is. I would have preferred not to see most of it through the windows of several 6-hour bus rides, but it's very nice. However, looking out the window onto low scrub, white soil, and endless rows of olive trees is about as comforting to me as seeing a moonscape. That's pretty much what we did. For six hours. My butt hurt by the end.
So when we arrived in Córdoba, I was very grateful to be away from recirculated air and 40 fratboys and sorority girls. Can you blame me? I didn't think you could. We got off the bus and the very first thing they had us do was go to the Cathedral/Mosque in the city. Technically, it's a cathedral, but it started out as a mosque and it looks like a mosque and it quacks like a mosque, so it's a mosque. And - dead serious - I stepped inside and it literally took my breath away. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life.
If you expect anything of me or would like to be proud of me in any way, stop reading here.
Ok, guys, now that it's only the gamers left (I think...), remember Diablo II? Remember the castle in Act II, with the harems in the basement? Remember the red and white striped arches? That was modeled after the mosque in Córdoba.
Grownups, you can come back now.
It was so awesome to see. Each arch is supported by a column, but the columns and capitals were mostly salvaged from Roman ruins, so they all have different decorations and shapes and sizes and stuff. They had to cut holes in the floor of some of them to equalize the height. They showed us all the work on the walls (it's all plaster-cast engraving work, some of it's original and it's really neat). There is a lot more I could describe, but I don't really remember. It's been a long week.
Then we went out for a walk around the center of the city in typical tourist-sheep fashion and ended up in the old synagogue, which was one room about the size of my bedroom. It had more neato wall decorations (I will steal people's pictures and then this description will be much less lameo). All in all, actually, this trip was an orgy of neato wall decorations. Córdoba also has these tiny little streets, almost like alleyways, so small that two people can't pass each other shoulder to shoulder. All the buildings were whitewashed and the walls decorated with flowers...it was basically a gigantic postcard. Nutty stuff.

Umm...so I'm tired and trying to search for trip tickets and disinclined to write. But that means that later, you get:

Sevilla

Granada

Other Fun Stuff that Happens Between Now and Then

Come Visit

especially the last one.

Bye!